


Bury Me

by TearoomSaloon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Actually this is probably closer to a wreck it fic, Ambiguous Suicide, Angst, Certified Depresso Espresso, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Suicidal Thoughts, This is not the fixit fic you're looking for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22119013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TearoomSaloon/pseuds/TearoomSaloon
Summary: "A bond between two living beings is not something easily broken. It is not a choice… it is like breaking a feeling. Like turning away from the Force. To break a bond, your feelings would have to change, or one of you would have to die—but even then, the bond wouldn't go away, it would simply… it would simply be empty, a wound."Post TRoS.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 19
Kudos: 42





	Bury Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [makonnaise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/makonnaise/gifts).



> For Mako, who wanted to revel in the pain.

Some nights it was worse to sleep.

Some nights—most nights—she lay awake, brain exhausted, body numb, mind racing until it ran out of things on which to dwell. She'd try to focus on her breathing, or her heartbeat, or the hum of machines whirling in her room. But she kept going back. She couldn't stop playing the moment over and over and over. The elation, the overwhelming hope, the happy future that was cruelly stomped into shards not even five minutes later.

How she'd held him in her arms only once. She didn't even get a chance to tell him she loved him, or needed him, or that she had no idea how to do this alone.

It wasn't fucking _fair_. She hadn't asked to live, or for him to sacrifice himself for her. They should have stayed together in either life or death, not separated by this void. Not stuck unable to sleep for nights and nights thinking about what else she possibly could have done.

She needed to stay alive. The Resistance needed her guidance, but she…

Rey couldn't use the Force anymore.

His death opened a wound in her. It leaked thick, viscous, visceral emotions. Like she'd had a limb amputated. Like there was an ulcer that just wouldn't close. She felt the residual touch of his bright, bright spirit whenever she channeled the Force and she—

She couldn't take it anymore.

He wasn't _there_ anymore.

There was no ghost, no contact, no dreams of him. Just darkness, just the void, his absence. She refused to say his name now, or mention him, or stay in any space that reminded her of his smile. That brilliant, beautiful smile she'd seen only once. She'd been robbed blind by this vicious universe.

She herself was turning into a wraith in the halls. Finn and Poe would try to speak to her and she would spirit herself away, unwilling to open up or admit how she was refusing to cope. What was the point, anyway?

He was dead.

Ben Solo died in her arms.

Rey felt her throat tighten as the words solidified in her head and she clutched his shirt tighter to her chest. Tears spilled across her face as she lay sideways on her bed. Dead. Gone. She was alone again and this time it was worse. Before it was her parents abandoning her, now it was her soulmate. Could she still have a soulmate if her soul had been torn in half?

"I miss you," she said softly when she sat up, hands bundled into the fabric of his clothes. They no longer smelled like sweat and blaster fire and blood. Now, they had no scent but her own.

This life was so damn cruel.

She still wasn't eating after a month, appetite missing in her depression. When she closed her eyes one morning sitting at the mess table, she could hear him sigh and say _You're wasting away, sunshine._

Was that...him?

She still hadn't seen his force ghost, or felt his presence, but that was Ben's voice. Her Ben, her beautiful, warm, loving, dead, cold, lost, gone, dead, dead, dead—

Rey hastily scrubbed a tear from her cheek before it got a chance to fall into her untouched porridge.

Nights were still bad. It had been two months now and she was still barely sleeping. She'd roared at Finn when he reached to touch her and proceeded to shut herself away.

"We haven't really seen you in months," said the defeated sigh from beyond her door.

"I don't want to be seen."

She wanted to be _dead._

What was the point of living without him? Without ever hearing his voice again? Without him getting to be happy and loved and protected? She wanted, so badly, to have been able to save him. She dreamed about what could have been, the family she'd wanted with him.

 _I should have asked you to teach me all those years ago,_ Ben would have said, watching her train younglings from across the galaxy for the new Jedi order. 

_I've learned a lot from you, couldn't do it without you,_ she'd say with a smile, wrapping her arms around his waist. She would have stepped up onto her tiptoes to kiss him, his lips soft and sweet against hers. And he'd laugh, a sound like deep bells and starlight, before holding her tight.

But then she would wake in the dark of a dream-fevered sleep and remember how cold the other side of the bed would always be.

She didn't hear his voice again until she nearly slid a hundred feet down a steep, steep cliffside.

_Rey!_

It was full of anxiety and fear, one syllable enough to drown out her entire mind. She used the Force to catch herself, painful as it was, and remained on her hands and knees, sucking cold air into her lungs. She hadn't seen the lip of the cliff through the fog, hadn't noticed how close she was due to cutting herself off from the Force. But his voice had reached her, had ricocheted in her head like a hollow point shell.

"Ben?" Her own voice cracked with disuse.

_Don't do that again, please, I can't lose you too._

And then he left. No sound, no vision. The echoes of birds and the distant roar of a waterfall were like a cacophony in her tired ears. She felt sweat cold on her brow when she stood, deciding it was time to return to base.

It took two evenings to put two and two together, that he was only appearing to her when she was in danger of hurting herself. Why he wouldn't show himself when she needed a comfort in the endless night was beyond her, but her broken mind would accept any form of contact regardless of the risks. Her soul was a wound without him.

She crashed a speeder on purpose next week.

Bloody, battered, and aching all over, she pulled herself from the wreckage to meet his eyes. He seemed tired, worried, and concerned. She couldn't help the waterworks.

 _Sunshine, look at you._ He kneeled beside her. _This is a dangerous game you're playing and you know it._

"I miss you," she said and winced, pain shooting up her arm. "Ben I can't do this much longer."

 _Yes, obviously, if you're going to get beat up like this every other week._ He placed his hands on her, to heal her. The feeling was excruciating, like fire and electricity simultaneously fighting to conquer her body, skin too sensitive to tolerate the slightest movement in the air.

"Stop, _stop!"_ She pushed him away, dizzy from the wound in their bond. When her head ceased spinning, he was gone.

She dreamt of him for months to follow, though it wasn't _Ben_ Ben. It was just her fabricated Ben, who hadn't died, who loved her, who would grow old with her in the green of some isolated planet where they could be content and alone. This wasn't the true Ben Solo, who was upset with her actions, who clucked his tongue and sighed in disappointment, who told her she was better than this and had to live for both of them now that she carried him in her heart.

He always showed up to make sure she was okay after she tried to just barely fail to kill herself, an act she partook in at least once a week. And he was disappointed, upset, and cross with her.

 _I can't keep helping you if you do this_ , he scolded, mending a broken rib. She'd thrown herself off a very tall ship she had been working on. It was only half an accident, but he knew.

"You don't have to help."

_I do. I gave my life for you and you're just trying to throw it away, trying to throw both of our lives away._

"I didn't ask you to revive me."

 _But I did. Because I love you, and I couldn't bear to know you'd given everything up for me._ He sighed, looking away. _Please don't make me regret it._

She never got up the courage to tell him she loved him back, couldn't stand being away from him, that she hurt every day he was gone.

On the anniversary of his death, she made a fatal mistake.

She wouldn't admit to herself if it were on purpose or not. If she wanted to die or not. If she were going to regret this, or live to regret it.

She'd been impaled while revisiting the wreckage of the second Death Star. She purposefully hadn't paid attention to where she was landing and slipped, falling onto a large spire of metal that tore right through her middle.

 _Oh, Rey._ Ben was distraught when he appeared, rushing to her side to survey the damage. _Sunshine I can't—I don't think I can do anything about this without hurting you in the process. Stay still, I—_

"No." Talking was an effort, breathing was an effort. "I can't do this any longer, Ben. I'm coming to join you."

_Rey, please think about this._

"I have, for a year." Blood burbled in her throat, her lungs. "I won't be without you anymore. I want to go home."

_Your home is here, in the realm of the living._

"No, my home is in you." She reached a hand to him weakly. "Can you...hold me, please? I don't want to do this alone."

He laid her head in his lap, stroked his fingers through her hair. _I can make it less painful._

"Don't, I want to feel this, the way you did. I'll be with you soon."

She closed her eyes slowly, wanting to memorize his face before she passed between realms.

The Ben before her was not the Ben who held her moments ago. The Ben before her was furious and broken, tears threatening to spill from his reddened eyes.

"What were you thinking?"

"That I wanted to be with you, that I couldn't keep living like that. Do you know how hollow it felt, having half of my soul ripped from me?"

"Yes, because I went through it too, and you just made me go through it again, permanently. Do you know how _awful_ that was to watch, you dying cold and alone?"

"Alone? You were with me."

He blinked, his anger fizzling out into fear. "I wasn't there with you."

"Yes you were, you've been with me every time I almost offed myself."

" _No I was not._ " He swallowed, mouth dry. "I'm not—I never learned how to become a Force ghost, Rey. I've been unable to contact you."

"I've been... hallucinating you?" Her eyes widened. "What did you mean _permanently?_ "

"Sunshine, there is no afterlife for those who take their own." He sighed and folded his arms. "This is the end of us, Rey."

She felt tears welling so heavily behind her eyes. "You won't come back for me?"

"I can't. There's no way to bridge the world of the dead with the will of the Force." He stepped to her, lay his hands on her shoulders, pressed his lips to her forehead. "Close your eyes. When you open them, you'll be free of your pain, okay?"

"But you won't be?"

"No. My wound will fester until the heat death of the universe and the eternity to follow. You can open your eyes now, sunshine."

She did.

Into an eternity of nothingness.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to curse steoganie mayerez to the depths of hell for making "hallucinate your loved one when you're in near death situations" associated solely with her shit-tier ya novels.


End file.
